System of a Down's Serj Tankian Sings of Hope and Utter Despair

By Rose Aguilar, AlterNet. Posted March 11, 2008.

When Serj Tankian takes on political and social issues on his new solo album, Elect the Dead, he doesn't mince words. In the most political song on the album, "The Unthinking Majority," he writes about a hypocritical warmongering government running a society controlled by antidepressants (in 2006, over 227 million antidepressant prescriptions were dispensed in the United States.):

We don't need your democracy
Execute them kindly for me
Take them by their filthy nostrils
Put them up in doggie hostels
We don't need your democracy
Postindustrial society
The unthinking majority

Elect the Dead is Tankian's first solo project after 10 years with the best-selling metal band System of a Down. An unconventional musician with a distinctive voice and complete creative control, Tankian plays almost every instrument on the album's 12 songs. "It's liberating because all the choices are mine. With this record, all success or failure rests with me," he says.

Part rock, part jazz, and everything in between, Elect the Dead invokes feelings of hope, frustration, inspiration and utter despair about our current state of affairs.

On and off stage, Tankian takes on issues like environmental destruction, capitalism, and the hypocrisy of pro-war preachers. The 10th track on Elect the Dead is appropriately called "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition." Each song, which is accompanied by a video created by film directors, painters and digital artists, is available free of charge on Tankian's official website.

Born in 1967 in Beirut, Lebanon, to Armenian parents during tumultuous political times, Tankian lived in his birthplace until 1975, when his family emigrated to Los Angeles. He says he became politicized by the hypocrisy of the denial of the Armenian genocide of 1915. Tankian's interview with his late grandfather, Stepan Haytayan, a survivor of the genocide, is featured in the documentary Screamers.

AlterNet's Rose Aguilar caught up with Serj Tankian to talk politics just a few hours before he rocked a sold-out crowd at the Warfield in San Francisco on Saturday. He'll be on tour for the next three months.

Rose Aguilar: In past interviews, you've said it's important to make a statement with your music, not just put out a record. I've been to a few of your shows and you have a very captive audience. Do you feel a responsibility to discuss political issues and promote activism?

Serj Tankian: No, I've never felt like it's our responsibility to speak out as artists. I think everyone's responsibility is to speak from the heart. It's not just artists' job or responsibility to talk about the truth. It's all of ours. We're human beings, and we live on this planet together, collectively. We need to be truthful. In terms of sociopolitical music or political music in general, speaking out is not a must. I think love songs can change the world a lot more than maybe political songs can.

Aguilar: You brought up truth, and that brings to mind your song, "Lie, Lie, Lie." In January, the Center for Public Integrity found that the Bush administration made over 900 false statements about Iraq following 9/11. Some would say they lied over 900 times, and this was over the course of just two years. Talk about your song "Lie, Lie, Lie." And also, what does truth mean anymore?

Tankian: "Lie, Lie, Lie" is a song that originally had really serious lyrics. I was going in with these really serious, really powerful lyrics with quirky music, and it just wasn't working. At first, I didn't notice why. The music's great. They lyrics are really cool. What's wrong with this song? Since I was producing it, I had to step back and go, OK, it's just mismatched. You've got all this dramatic, operatic funny music with serious potent vocals that don't belong there, so I went in and I improvised and made the whole thing into a lie. Originally, I didn't mean to call it "Lie, Lie, Lie," like nontruth; it was more just the singing of "la, la, la, la." Then I thought, I should just call it "Lie, Lie, Lie" 'cause it worked perfect. The whole thing was a fabrication.

As to your question about truth, it doesn't matter what my meaning of truth is. I just notice that anytime there's two people that both claim to be speaking the truth, generally only one of them is. The other one is trying to be perceived as speaking the truth. This is not to say that people don't believe that what they believe they feel is true. This is to say that in reality, there's only truth. Something either happened or did not happen. There's no questioning of that. There's no gray area in my opinion. When they're talking about denial of a genocide, there's no question that a genocide occurred. It's just that because of sociopolitical or geopolitical reasoning, they're trying to deny it, but that doesn't mean that it did not occur. There's always one truth.

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Rose Aguilar is the host of Your Call on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco and author of the forthcoming book, Red Highways: A Liberal's Journey Into the Heartland (PoliPoint Press).

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